CMLC 2023-12-24 Sermon

Howdy. Well sorry I did not make it last week. I was in the midst of the throws of

various coughing bits. It would not have been enjoyable or pleasant whatsoever.

But it sounds like we had someone who was able to come in and take care of things.

That looked like an epic beard that guy had. So oh my word, I don't know if and

when I could ever pull that off. But really wonderful and glad that other

ministers in the area can have each other's backs at times like that. Today I

wanted to talk a little bit to you about our fourth advent theme. I wanted to talk

to you about love. And as much as we oftentimes take this term and this idea

for granted, is that the idea of love ends up being a lot deeper and more

expansive than what we may realize. See it turns out that love ends up becoming

something that's harder for us to abide in than we sometimes realize. And to try

to get this across a bit, one of the things that I realized was how much I

was not communicating love because of being late. Something that you have to

understand is that there is such a thing as Jason time. Jason time is typically

about a half hour late to any event. It doesn't really matter necessarily what

the event is, but take whatever the time is at half hour and that's usually the

time when Jason would be expected to show up. Now over the years it's become sort

of like recurring joke at various times. At one point even being told one time

that an event was half an hour earlier in order to make sure that I got there on

time. However, joke was on them, I actually felt really good about getting

there on time and it ended up 20 minutes earlier. But with it though is over the

years it started to become something of you know yeah it was funny but also at

the same time it was sort of this underlying idea of yeah but if Jason's

constantly late what does he think of the event he was going to in the first

one. See one of the things is that oftentimes in being late to something

it can communicate to people that you don't think that their event is as

worthy of your time. Whenever a person is late it can oftentimes be seen as you

don't respect the host. And that was something that I struggled with especially

for my sister and my sister's family up in Cyprus. I lived in Baytown for a while

there and if I wanted to go see my sister that was an hour investment each

way no matter what. But with it though is oftentimes it'd be a Friday afternoon and

I'm trying to squeeze in everything that I can before I leave. Did I take care of

all my chores? Was the laundry done? Did I make sure that I had all the things

ready for my next teaching assignment and I had all my lesson plans prepped? Did I

make sure that I had everything in my backpack that I could possibly need for

the entire evening? Even things like well what am I going to do when I get there?

Am I supposed to be helping with dinner? Am I supposed to be playing a game with

my brother-in-law? And then realizing that I was supposed to already be there

and I hadn't even gotten out the door yet. The thing was is that as much as I was

spending so much time in my mind trying to make sure that I had everything

taken care of that needed to be done is that I was missing out on just being

there with my family which was the biggest thing that they had wanted in the

first place. Over time then as much as from time to time I still have my

moments but by and large it's usually five to ten minutes now rather than half

an hour. With it though is that we realize sometimes that the simplest

things are what's actually needed to communicate love and I want to do that

with one of the most obvious figures in scripture that helps us to realize how

to communicate the love of God. King and Cats. Yes that was meant to be a joke y'all

mostly don't even know who that is and so but somehow one of the things that

always stood out to me about this story was that literally he had to do nothing

and it would have been better than what ended up happening. You see what was

going on is that Israel had been split the northern kingdoms were still called

Israel and they were being ruled at the time by King Pekka who had killed the

previous king in order to make sure that he had taken over. With it though is

there was also Syria being ruled by King Rezin and neither one of them wanted to

be dominated by Assyria nearby being run by Tiglath Palaeus who was a third. Now

what they did is they then went to the king in Judah King and Cats and they

said partner with us make alliances and we'll make sure that Assyria can't boss

us around anymore but you see the difficulty is that neither one of those

countries was actually a good country for Judah to ally with. You see they also

had various practices that were very very displeasing to God not just in

regard to sacrifices which may or may not have sometimes involved children but

also in regard to the ways in which that they would practice their rituals

oftentimes abusing sexuality in the life. See essentially even though Israel had

the name Israel it wasn't actually behaving like the children of Israel and

so what did God say? Don't don't ally yourself with them. And then what does he end up focusing on?

He ends up focusing on the birth of a child. What he is communicating is that

before this young child can be born and weaned and come to know what is good and

evil those two countries of Israel and Syria they'll be gone anyway. Don't

bother with them because by time you even get to that point they'll be gone

anyway. But you see he did listen he did avoid partnering with them but what did he

end up doing instead? He partnered with Assyria and Assyria ended up coming and

besieging them later in making their life miserable. All he had to do was nothing.

But you see that was the struggle oftentimes is that instead of just

focusing on what God wanted from the people of Judah instead of just

focusing on what it was that God had to communicate is that instead they wanted

to make sure that they stood out that they were noteworthy among the nations.

You see even back then they were worried about having cool alters. See any

time they saw the altars in another country they wanted theirs to be just

as cool not just in the way that appeared but also in whatever practices

that they had as they would do their sacrifices on the altar. That can sometimes

be difficult. It is sometimes we can get so caught up in wanting to be attractive

and obvious and noteworthy. I was I had told everybody you know hey come on over

if you feel like coming over on Friday and be able to celebrate Christmas you

know if you have the opportunity if you're free. In the midst of it one of the

things that was noteworthy is that apparently a lot of people wanted to

make sure that they invited people to come over to church and as soon as

somebody said that they were in a sense they were laughing about it. It's like oh

man well one way or another we got invited to your church one way or another

and I'm just kind of sitting there thinking okay yeah but you're laughing

about them I'm actually kind of thrilled that they did but even more though is

that to go from laughing about people inviting you to church but then the

conversation started going to a lot of the other churches that they had visited

and they started talking about this pastor who turned out had actually been

having an affair with his wife a affair with someone else who wasn't his wife

then turned out went to go and plant different church somewhere else in

Houston and then turned out this other one would promise that he would never

get caught up in drama ended up leaving because he wanted a better salary

somewhere else and all these different things and I remember and I'm sitting

there and I'm thinking to myself yes but at the end of the day you're probably

still going to go to their churches because they're fancier they're larger

they had a better marketing campaign on Facebook and I'm sitting there thinking

y'all joked about the people at our church inviting you but at the same

time are we in the midst of all these other issues that are coming up and

that was the thing that threw me is that part of me was all the jealous and then

I had to pause and slow down and say yeah but at the end of the day are we

showing mercy to people are we hearing scripture are we spending the time

knowing who God is but also are we more focused on loving God and our neighbor

or are we more focused on loving whatever trappings are around us and that

was one of the moments that I had right to pause and I had to say you know what

maybe maybe it's okay to just let God do what he's going to do in his time you

see that that son that child that was promised whenever we read the passage

it says Emmanuel God with us you see the original person being spoken of was

actually King Hezekiah you see after King A has King King Hezekiah and he went

and he ended up completely completely redoing the way that they did worship

the whole goal was for him to come in and to make sure that the altars were not

being utilized for pagan worship or for idols that they stopped sacrificing

people to make sure that there was actually going to be the reading of

scripture among the people to constantly look through and figure out how can we

be the people of God Hezekiah ended up being one of the better reformers among

the kings throughout the area but at the very last minute he still slipped up and

when they had managed to resist the king of Assyria and managed to cause him to

go back to his kingdom he just couldn't help but demonstrate how strong they were

to the king of battle who would then end up coming along and taking over them

for the next 70 years see that's oftentimes one of the things that we

end up finding is difficult loving God and loving your neighbor sounds so simple and yet that seems to be the part that we miss the most

when we look at our gospel reading and we're looking at what it is for the

angel to be speaking to Joseph and says do not be afraid to take Mary as your

wife you see the thing is is that we oftentimes lose sight of the fact that

there were many things that actually could have been done wrong you see Joseph

could have run away he could have been like you know what this is a little too

complicated I don't know what's going on here she's saying that she is you know

pregnant by the Holy Spirit that doesn't sound quite right but even if it's

true who would actually believe it how many people in Joseph's family do you

think were like dude your wife is pregnant of the Holy Spirit are you

really gonna buy that he could have just run away or they could have tried to

rush they could have tried to rush the wedding and to be able to say okay

let's say that she is pregnant but maybe we just want to make sure that it's not

so obvious let's just go ahead and go get married now and then that way we

won't have to worry about the way that it looks or maybe even more than that if

they were following Abraham's thinking let's go ahead and get married now and

let's start trying to have kids so that then whichever one is the first one is

the one that the angel must be talking about which is of course how Abraham had

Ishmael before he had Isaac or even more than that what does it mean just to stop

and say God you do what you're going to do and that's a hard part for us right

now in this season there are a lot of things that we want to make perfect and

beautiful at this time it is it is December 24th if your packages have not

arrived by today they're probably not getting here in time I know somebody

needed to let you know that just giving you a heads up if the cake doesn't come

out right you probably not going to go get anything new just gotta leave it me

if there is any pecan pie that is left over in the fridge from Thanksgiving you

may end up having to serve that that may or may not be what is currently sitting

in my refrigerator at this time along with some pumpkin pie but it is what it

is but with this though is that all of these things that are going to be so

difficult and stressful especially these next 24 hours or so is that it's going

to be so easy to try to figure out how to be not just busy but also trying to

make everything perfect when in reality love God and love your neighbor is that

the greatest gift has already been given to us and more than that is that you

have the greatest gift in your life already your family and your friends

and it is so easy to lose sight of that but you see that's the thing about what

we see not just with Mary and Joseph but also with ourselves is that when it says

to abide in God because he abides in us that's harder than we might oftentimes

want to admit right now what is abiding in your heart is it stress is it anxiety

is it frustration is there somebody that made everything difficult at work did

somebody end up getting sick and now you have to take their hours is there

something going on with one of your relatives is one of the kids fighting

with another one is someone up in Kansas having a visit with family and you're

not even sure whether or not they're going to see everybody while they're

there right now what's happening in your heart because one of the hardest parts

right now is that it is oftentimes not love and that's where we find ourselves

today is to be able to pause and slow down and say God my heart doesn't always

have love in it the way it's supposed to it says here in 1st John 4 by this we

know that we abide in him and he and us because he has given us of his spirit and

then skips down so we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for

us God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him

there are a lot of things that are distracting us from that and a lot of

things that we feel we're going to need to accomplish between now and the new

year and everything that we have to try to figure out as January comes along but

the truth this is that it really just is that simple is that God came to this

earth to be with us and that as much as Mary and Joseph could have tried to figure

it all out is that instead the best thing for them was to sit back and to let

God do what he was going to do right now that's for you too God is currently at

work but do you let him do that are we so busy trying to make sure that

everything is perfect the way we want it to be that we miss out on seeing what it

is that God is doing in our lives this season so wherever you end up finding

yourself the rest of today hopefully tonight at 7 p.m. here at Christmoriel

Lutheran but may today and tomorrow be an opportunity to enjoy the time with God

those who God has placed in our hearts and in our lives not trying to force what

we think everything needs to be for Christmas but instead enjoying the best

part of it that God is in control that God loves us and that he has given of

himself for us and because of what he has done we truly have the love of God

ourselves thanks be to God